Screaming Woman (Photo : Weibo)
Men who line up at a Beijing hospital’s emergency room queue and sell the registration numbers to patients were the subject of a Chinese woman’s anger. The woman, who was making ends meet as many ordinary Chinese are, fell in line for her sick mother.
Someone filmed the woman screaming and cursing at the scammers at the waiting room. The 2-minute, 30-second video of the incident, which happened on Jan. 25, was posted on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging site, and has become viral with more than 100,000 shares and 40,000 shares, reported Epoch Times.
The subject of the woman’s outrage is the fee that patients have to pay to get a waiting ticket. At the Guang’anmen Hospital where the incident happened, the fee is 300 yuan ($45). What made her transform into a beast mode was after falling in line for a long time, gang members cut into the line and would later sell the 300-yuan registration tickets for 4,500 yuan ($680).
“Why is it so hard for the common people just get registered for a place in line at the hospital?” she shouted in anger in her distinct northeastern Mandarin accent. She complained of queueing since early morning and failing to register and told the ticket sellers, “I don’t care if you guys are here for a profit, at least you should actually wait in line like everyone else.”
The irate woman believes the gang members and the hospital security personnel had some connection because they exchange glances with the hospital staff and then inserted themselves in front of the long line.
Because corruption is pervasive in Chinese hospitals where bribes, or at least knowing someone inside is needed to avail of medical procedures and services, Weibo users criticized the situation through their comments on the site.
One Weibo user lamented the failure of society to address these issues and instead pay attention to celebrity news. Another thinks Chinese society is seriously hopeless because of cases of patients dying in queue in front of the hospital. The situation made the commenter teary eyed.
However, to add insult to the injury, the hospital said that the woman’s accusation were baseless, reported China Central Television. The New York Times reported that the hospital, in a statement, made a preliminary investigation and found no collusion between the hospital guards and the hospital ticket scalpers.
